Sync a local and a remote directory with rsync over sshfs (e.g. when you only have sftp access). Note the defer_permissions option and the -c (checksum) flag. Tested on OS X with rsync 2.6.9 and sshfs 2.4.0 (fuse4x 0.9.2).

rsync-sshfs.sh

#!/bin/bash
SSH_USER="[email protected]"                  # your sftp credentials
SSH_KEY="~/.ssh/id_rsa"                          # your ssh private key
DOCUMENT_ROOT="/www/vhosts/mywebsite.com/htdocs" # directory on the remote server
LOCAL_DIR="~/mywebsite.com/public"               # directory on your local machine
REMOTE_DIR="_remote_dir"                         # temporary mount point

mkdir -p $REMOTE_DIR

sshfs $SSH_USER:$DOCUMENT_ROOT $REMOTE_DIR -o workaround=rename -o defer_permissions -o IdentityFile=$SSH_KEY

rsync -rlvcP --delete $LOCAL_DIR $REMOTE_DIR

umount $REMOTE_DIR

rm -r $REMOTE_DIR